On the Web - Reaching the People

This month, the LJ Web site offers an interview with the developer of GNU Radio and more voices from the new hacker democracy.

In late 2003 and so far in 2004, much has been made of the effect
the Internet is having on the 2004 US presidential election. From
candidate blogs to open-source celebrities installed high in certain
candidates' steering committees, it's true that the Internet
and open-source mentalities have altered the national campaign playing
field. If nothing else, the Dean campaign aptly demonstrated what can
happen when people have the means to connect digitally with like-minded
people across the country. Does it still qualify as grass roots if some
of the grass is in Oregon and some is in Massachusetts? Or has grass roots
been replaced by “Net roots”?

Being in the midst of one of the most contentious campaigns in the
past 100 years, it's hard to have the distance necessary to understand
the real effect the Internet has on these proceedings. What's more
important, reading Kerry's blog from the road or determining whether on-line
voting has the potential to make more people vote and to deliver those
votes in an accurate manner? Perhaps the part of this changing
electoral/political landscape that offers the most potential for serious
good is the application of open-source philosophy. Doc's feature article
in this issue, “Hacking Democracy”, explores some of these questions and
the larger issue of what should be open source's role in government
proceedings of all types. A companion piece, “Voices from the New
Hackers of Democracy” (www.linuxjournal.com/article/7474) on the
Linux Journal Web site, offers more commentary
by some of those involved in this conversation.

As the Internet and Internet-based technologies grow and reach more
people, what becomes of old technologies, such as radio? They morph
into something else, in this case, software radio. In this issue,
Eric Blossom writes about GNU Radio, his project that involves
“getting code as close to the antenna as possible”. In
a follow-up Web interview with our Editor in Chief, Eric talks
about the prospects and politics of software-defined radio (www.linuxjournal.com/article/7502).

As we head into summer, we're at work on the design for the 2004 Ultimate
Linux Box. Don Marti is back to author this year's article, and he
offers a “ULB 2004 Preview” (www.linuxjournal.com/article/7503) on the LJ
Web site. He writes, “Our first four-way SMP Ultimate Linux Box will run a
2.6 kernel. It's also the first Ultimate Linux Box with more memory than
can be addressed with 32 bits. It has more memory than our 2000 Ultimate
Linux Box had hard drive space. We built a 2.6 kernel with the default
configuration, in a tmpfs filesystem in RAM, in 1 minute 41 seconds.
Drivers permitting, it'll be a personal video recorder, too—for
HDTV.”
It's about time someone remembered ultimate is the key word in Ultimate
Linux Box.

Our Web site also features regular columns by Dave Phillips, writing on
Linux and audio; Bruce Byfield, writing on OpenOffice.org; and Chris
DiBona, writing on, well, whatever he feels like. Other upcoming topics
include a multipart article on the quest for fast boot times and an
introduction to the Pygame library.

If there's a topic or application you'd like to see covered on the
Linux Journal Web site, or if you have an open
source in government project you would like to write about, drop me
a line at heather@ssc.com.